UNWELCOME SUNSETS: HAWAII UTILITIES, GOVERNMENT – WORST POLLUTERS

Hawaii is full of contradictions. The state leads all others in the union in solar installations per capita. And the government is spending a lot of taxpayer dollars on wind farms. Hawaii is also the first state to pass a law requiring 100 percent of the state’s electricity to be generated using renewables by 2045.

Progressive, right?

Yes. But appearances can be deceiving. Hawaii is also one of only 8 states to see its carbon emissions actually rise in the last 7 years.

Why?

Because Hawaiian public utilities generates most of their power using imported crude oil. And the state allows unfettered pollution from burning of sugar cane fields, including that at the Puunene plant in Maui (see “Sugar Cane: Another Season of Smoke Looms Over Maui“).

“They are interested only in their crony capitalist profits: Global warming is just a sales pitch.” [Hawaii Free Press]

And while profession a Clean Energy Initiative and its commitment to renewable energy, the Hawaiian government has also allowed the public utilities to raise their electric rates sharply despite a record number of solar installations. Nor do they compensate private solar producers for excess energy fed into the utility grid, as most of the states on the mainland do.

So Hawaii’s unfettered pollution is fueled by unfettered corporate greed.

Hawaii also has the third highest gasoline tax rate in the nation, after Pennsylvania and New York and by far the highest gasoline prices at the pump of any other state.

Just another example of unfettered corporate greed.

For the time being, however, surfing and swimming is still free in Hawaii. Until some government or corporate tycoon figures out a way of taxing the waves.

Yikes!

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UPDATE JULY 29, 2015

NORWAY LEADS ELECTRIC CAR MARKET

Norway is leading the world’s electric vehicle market, having registered its 50,000th electric car in April of this year. In the first quarter of 2015, 8,112 plug-in electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles were sold in Norway, accounting for a third of the country’s total vehicle registrations, according to IHS Automotive.

Norway is roughly the size of Colorado (around 5 million population according to the 2010 Census). So no wonder that in terms of percentage of all electric cars its lead is even more impressive. A full one-third of all registered cars in Norway are electric! Compare that to a mere 0.8% in our country of 320 million people.

By the way, Norway also ranks as the No. 1 country in the world in terms of human development and standard of living. Iceland is No. 13. And NEITHER country is a member of the European Union! (see €UROTOPIA: UNITED STATES OF EUROPE (1995) – http://wp.me/p3QU1S-14t).

For what it’s worth, Elizabeth and I took our first Leaf electric car ride in February 2012 in Honolulu. We got our own Leaf in Maui in May 2012. Ours was the first electric car license plate issued on Maui. Now when one drives around the island, I you see the Leafs everywhere – by FAR MORE than in Arizona, for example.

Speaking of which, we have been also driving a Honda Hybrid in Arizona since 2008. Now we have two of them.